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Indeterminate clear, nice day for a Saturday morning, a modest tower, safe, from which to see. Last night. A past-hyped art piece (ha) that turned familiar in disturbing ways. That a certain world, once inhabited without question, was already perverse, designed by greased-up power-clowns, and world-historical problems, if not made clear, at least had some ugly guts spilled out, glorious tacky, and evil, almost innocent with shamelessness. A devil’s garden (Manhattan, Berlin, Jerusalem?). What things were born that still bear fruit, etc.
Weekend questions, am I fruit? As I breakfast (fried plantains with drizzle of palm sugar) leisurely on the bale with Glagahdowo and Pacitan (husband and G. and A.). Nongkrong. Temperature the same as skin. Sweetness on teeth, obscure (to me) vernaculars bouncing out time, bitter coffee biting down. The joy of being included, with eye-contact, in laughter, at a harmless joke, (about the pisang goreng, and who accidentally picked the over-burned piece). How I covet such rudimentary signs of trust. (Re-making a life on their foundation.) While contemplating a different city, and whether it could ever be, that certain things that happened, never happened.
Woken by earthquake. Between clean sheets, a brief interval of (probably insufficient) alertness. Light rattle of windowpane. Being moved. Doesn’t stop so much as fade into a wobbly hallucination. Pathos, a (mercifully) gentle reminder. That ground is also made of shifting-in-relationship pieces.
Now is the time of the lunar month when I start having (noticing) the darker feelings. (Also. Random waking, trouble sleeping, heightened sensitivity to smell.) I never know how much of that (“the darkness”) I want to put into the blog, or how much choice I have in the matter, or even whether this is any different than my normal (purple and pink) word salad. (It’s a blog about my salad days.) And it makes me feel a universal guilt. So I would like to say I’m sorry to everyone (including those not in my life).
(Every poem is an apology, broken in one way or another.)
Last night, beneath a sky full of stars. Crickets and tongaret and frogs of a hundred voices, night bird from the jungle with a wistful lilt. Full chorus. From within, Pacitan and Glagahdowo chat tentatively as they wire a fixture, poke fun at R., the youngest, for an accident with the motorbike. (He’s ok.) How did so much time pass without seeing stars? (One of rainy season’s more subtle effects, no stars for months.) The sound and the visible meet in expansive absorption. One doesn’t want to leave the moment for anything.
(One must, and so, one does.)
This morning. Wake in the different, the old, the becoming emptier place, where our presence thins. Wijaya kusuma, orchids, instruments, gone. Cats observant, unsure of change. To abandon all of these heavy, unfixable things.
But our footsteps are lightness. We orchestrate movement, flowing now as if downhill. We tell Blih that he absolutely must come visit (arguing against his inner voices). And we prepare, part by part, to disappear.
(To the place where one listens to stars.)
Amber citrine on midnight velvet smiling surprised me above the tree line as we left to see what the house (electric installation) looks like by night. Giving shapes and lines an implied trickery or deception, warmly but also cruelly comedic, elegant. The moon with two horns. Reasons to be happy and reasons to be very very sad, these past few days. Rediscovering the deep well dug down through the bedrock of the soul called grief.
Repetitive, slow single bangs from a place behind, across the small concrete waterway, that delivers rain and runoff down land. As chopping wood? The refrain of roosters seamlessly fused with the pastel light. Memory of a word, perhaps useless here, equiprimordial. I still shape it into a whisper.
Sometimes the scent of a pale peach rose is the cool feeling on your cheek of the breeze blowing from the west through the rice fields in central Bali that might bring more rain tomorrow but has cleared away the rain from yesterday.
Intensification and a crushing-in by sound that triggers claustrophobia. Awake in dark. Loudness outside everywhere pressing in on our small room. An image comes, half-speculation, of rushing rising from below, lifting up this piece of earth. Anxiety of infinitude. How (could it not be empty yet)? Where (is it all coming) from? The sheer scale of element overwhelms the primate calculation. Ocean, immense. A spare fraction of her being is enough to wash us (and drowned dreaming) all away.
(Stop thinking about anything else, stop writing, cover eyes, and become fish.)
Finally, all are home. Precipitation never stopped. Heavy mood of endless rain, (which oddly doesn’t appear on any radar map), shadowless medium fades to thickened black. Cloaked under cloud, enshrouded by water, all but forgotten by the outside world. The relief of becoming profoundly inaccessible.
Morning of puddles, drips, gurgles, the persistent lap and blur of water on glass, glossy leaves nodding under plonks of rain, tucking in noses and toes to keep warm and dry. Homecomings expected, green shadows, grey shining, detached from specifics of time, but waiting. Sunlight without direction.
Sound of rain, to look up, and admit that morning’s reverie is over. The incense of an offering, long since out. The fact of having eaten, (or an empty plate, sitting there), without clear memory of it. A heavy sigh as day changes position, rolling over into evening, and shifting atmosphere blows trees into an ocean, cooling. Jeki appears, we choose an herb responsive to the coming dark. Feed her and strike a flame. Turn it into smoke, inhale a little nighttime air, and go to bed, quite early.
That was a little witchy, wasn’t it.
I guess I live now in a world of rain. Always about to rain, and sometimes does, and if I wash dishes, my face beads with moisture, from me or from the damp air, pores open, passable, sensitive, vulnurable, and everything must be said in a whisper, as at a funeral. Borderless, spherical. Thoughts too cutting for snails and frogs, who would breathe them in like blades, must be shared without syllables. With touch, immediate, tears tasted by skin, and that this world could dissolve in compassion.
Easy gloom, gentle periods of rain, and barely a transition from sleep. Or at all. Water, earth, air, at an even temperature. The wet doesn’t dry, the dry doesn’t wash away. Coffee blends into a universal container, as the dream becomes lucid, and atmosphere moderates a few simple questions.
Learning to discern between hunger that’s sick and hunger that’s healthy. (Patho-logical and… logical? auto-logical? dia-logical?) In cat care, self-care, care in general. Observing, treating for, recovering from, parasites. (Overshoot, and the ana-logical.) Swallowing bitter herbs.
Unusual calm this morning, absence of demand. (Explained later by the fact, which I missed, I was sleeping, that somebody else took care of jobs that are usually mine.) A shadow of floating, displaced fear, and a choice, to let the intimacy of sensation remind me that we are (here, and not un)real.
A day spent adjusting between conflicted places and moods. Driving through Denpasar in Sweet Orange, windows down, concrete heat. Hair stuck to my cheeks, impossible to clear. Music from a younger country, (pie), dobro and whiskey, as the sun goes down and the city takes shape, interiors lit, full of smartphone advertisements, food stalls, diesel fumes, cartoon boba shops. A moment of lightness (under bright lights) in a foreign space. Dealing out as needed, the inside occupied by questions of boundaries and the effort it takes to let something go. Nothing quite settles until we get home, (it’s not home yet), wash feet, splash face, new toothpaste the scent of orange and cloves. Head on pillow. Ish, asleep. Lalah, playing, on top of the armoire. Waiting for E., and the closeness of warm skin, and for all of these things to slow to a stop.
Anger in writing becomes virulent. It never tires and lacks feeling for when to stop. Rage without responsibility does damage unmeasured, unintended, uncontrolled. You (we) know better than these written words. Friends, take care. Turning untempered anger into writing is making the material of war.
So cloudy this morning that the air gets darker as the sun rises. Everything outside is dripping wet, water-heavy, steamy muffle. Good for frogs, orchids, snails, mushrooms, mold… sleepy farmers. A touch cool, perfect flannel shirt weather, the monsoon holds, the atmosphere keeps wringing out rain.
Leftover notes from yesterday, recorded with morning coffee today. //
We met a guardian of the path at Ranu Pane, sitting on his sleeping mat, with a fire to keep his toes warm. And his bag of snacks, a jolly fellow. Stopped for a chat about mutual friends, traditional farming methods, and the corrosive effects of tourism. Always, what a small world it is, around here. //
The scent of woodsmoke in the mountains, memories of that. //
E. and I got a lot of weird looks from local tourists yesterday, this isn’t typical. Not sure why. People see me, assume E. is foreign too. Stare, heckle us, snap pictures with their phones. //
We saw at least two motorbike accidents on the mountain roads yesterday. Both women, one looked like she was fine, the other one looked very bad, she had blood running down her face, appeared pale and grey. Many had already stopped to help, so we drove on… //
A transport truck couldn’t make it up one of the inclines, it was overloaded with potatoes. “Boss goblok,” said E., who jumped out and helped push it to the next pull-over point. //
The high-altitude villages around Lumajang, which primarily grow green onions, smell like green onions. You catch whiffs of it as you drive through. //
I have clearer photos of the lutung but those feel private. //
I also have pictures of Gunung Batok, will probably share later. //
I have to relearn how to use “the good camera”, another reason it’s ok we didn’t see Bromo yesterday, my camera skills are not (yet?) worthy. //
I forgot my carnelian stone at home, I realized. //
Always, a beginner, again. //